The concept of collaborative health

Abstract

Based on empirical research about teamwork in human service organizations in Sweden, the concept of collaborative health (CH) encapsulates the physical, psychological and social health resources the individual uses in teamwork; resources which at the same time are influenced by the teamwork. My argument built on empirical research leading up to identifying and defining the core concept in this article, is that teamwork affects team members' health and this in turn affects the teamwork and its outcome. In this paper collaborative health is viewed from a social constructionism perspective and discussed in relation to earlier concepts developed in social psychology and working life research, including psychosocial stress and burnout. The paper also introduces the concept of functional synergy, which in this context is defined as the simultaneous presence of sharp goal-orientation and synergy in teamwork. The need for a holistic team theory is emphasized as a tool in research on teamwork. Such a theory relies on identifying sound and illuminating constituent concepts. I suggest that collaborative health could be a useful concept for better understanding the complex collaborative and co-operative teamwork of human service organizations of today.

Keywords:

• Collaborative health
• teamwork
• working climate
• interprofessional collaboration

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Della Freeth, Associate Editor of the Journal of Interprofessional Care for a most constructive discussion related to my research findings and the most appropriate way of presenting them. I would also like to thank health therapist Carin Ljungkvist for her way of bringing back my conclusions to the persons we really should support in their teamwork efforts.

Declaration of interest: The author reports no conflicts of interest. The authors alone is responsible for the content and writing of the paper.